Senior British diplomat Robert Cooper has helped to shape British
Prime Minister Tony Blair's calls for a new internationalism and a new
doctrine of humanitarian intervention which would place limits on state
sovereignty. This article contains the full text of Cooper's essay on "the
postmodern state", written in a personal capacity, an extract from which
appears in the print edition of The Observer today. Cooper's call for a
new liberal imperialism and admission of the need for double standards in
foreign policy have outraged the left but the essay offers a rare and
candid unofficial insight into the thinking behind British strategy on
Afghanistan, Iraq and beyondYou can join the
online debate here.

In 1989 the political systems of three
centuries came to an end in Europe: the balance-of-power and the imperial
urge. That year marked not just the end of the Cold War, but also, and
more significantly, the end of a state system in Europe which dated from
the Thirty Years War. September 11 showed us one of the implications of
the change.

To understand the present, we must first understand the past, for the
past is still with us. International order used to be based either on
hegemony or on balance. Hegemony came first. In the ancient world, order
meant empire. Those within the empire had order, culture and civilisation.
Outside it lay barbarians, chaos and disorder. The image of peace and
order through a single hegemonic power centre has remained strong ever
since. Empires, however, are ill-designed for promoting change. Holding
the empire together - and it is the essence of empires that they are
diverse - usually requires an authoritarian political style; innovation,
especially in society and politics, would lead to instability.
Historically, empires have generally been static.

In Europe, a middle way was found between the stasis of chaos and the
stasis of empire, namely the small state. The small state succeeded in
establishing sovereignty, but only within a geographically limited
jurisdiction. Thus domestic order was purchased at the price of
international anarchy. The competition between the small states of Europe
was a source of progress, but the system was also constantly threatened by
a relapse into chaos on one side and by the hegemony of a single power on
the other. The solution to this was the balance-of-power, a system of
counter-balancing alliances which became seen as the condition of liberty
in Europe. Coalitions were successfully put together to thwart the
hegemonic ambitions firstly of Spain, then of France, and finally of
Germany.

But the balance-of-power system too had an inherent instability, the
ever-present risk of war, and it was this that eventually caused it to
collapse. German unification in 1871 created a state too powerful to be
balanced by any European alliance; technological changes raised the costs
of war to an unbearable level; and the development of mass society and
democratic politics, rendered impossible the amoral calculating mindset
necessary to make the balance of power system function. Nevertheless, in
the absence of any obvious alternative it persisted, and what emerged in
1945 was not so much a new system as the culmination of the old one. The
old multi-lateral balance-of-power in Europe became a bilateral balance of
terror worldwide, a final simplification of the balance of power. But it
was not built to last. The balance of power never suited the more
universalistic, moralist spirit of the late twentieth century.

The second half of the twentieth Century has seen not just the end of
the balance of power but also the waning of the imperial urge: in some
degree the two go together. A world that started the century divided among
European empires finishes it with all or almost all of them gone: the
Ottoman, German, Austrian, French , British and finally Soviet Empires are
now no more than a memory. This leaves us with two new types of state:
first there are now states - often former colonies - where in some sense
the state has almost ceased to exist a 'premodern' zone where the state
has failed and a Hobbesian war of all against all is underway (countries
such as Somalia and, until recently, Afghanistan). Second, there are the
post imperial, postmodern states who no longer think of security primarily
in terms of conquest. And thirdly, of course there remain the traditional
"modern" states who behave as states always have, following Machiavellian
principles and raison d'ètat (one thinks of countries such as India,
Pakistan and China).

The postmodern system in which we Europeans live does not rely on
balance; nor does it emphasise sovereignty or the separation of domestic
and foreign affairs. The European Union has become a highly developed
system for mutual interference in each other's domestic affairs, right
down to beer and sausages. The CFE Treaty, under which parties to the
treaty have to notify the location of their heavy weapons and allow
inspections, subjects areas close to the core of sovereignty to
international constraints. It is important to realise what an
extraordinary revolution this is. It mirrors the paradox of the nuclear
age, that in order to defend yourself, you had to be prepared to destroy
yourself. The shared interest of European countries in avoiding a nuclear
catastrophe has proved enough to overcome the normal strategic logic of
distrust and concealment. Mutual vulnerability has become mutual
transparency.

The main characteristics of the postmodern world are as follows:

· The breaking down of the distinction between domestic and
foreign affairs.

· The rejection of force for resolving disputes and the
consequent codification of self-enforced rules of behaviour.

· The growing irrelevance of borders: this has come about both
through the changing role of the state, but also through missiles, motor
cars and satellites.

· Security is based on transparency, mutual openness,
interdependence and mutual vulnerability.

The conception of an International Criminal Court is a striking example
of the postmodern breakdown of the distinction between domestic and
foreign affairs. In the postmodern world, raison d'ètat and the amorality
of Machiavelli's theories of statecraft, which defined international
relations in the modern era, have been replaced by a moral consciousness
that applies to international relations as well as to domestic affairs:
hence the renewed interest in what constitutes a just war.

While such a system does deal with the problems that made the
balance-of-power unworkable, it does not entail the demise of the nation
state. While economy, law-making and defence may be increasingly embedded
in international frameworks, and the borders of territory may be less
important, identity and democratic institutions remain primarily national.
Thus traditional states will remain the fundamental unit of international
relations for the foreseeable future, even though some of them may have
ceased to behave in traditional ways.

What is the origin of this basic change in the state system? The
fundamental point is that "the world's grown honest". A large number of
the most powerful states no longer want to fight or conquer. It is this
that gives rise to both the pre-modern and postmodern worlds. Imperialism
in the traditional sense is dead, at least among the Western powers.

If this is true, it follows that we should not think of the EU or even
NATO as the root cause of the half century of peace we have enjoyed in
Western Europe. The basic fact is that Western European countries no
longer want to fight each other. NATO and the EU have, nevertheless,
played an important role in reinforcing and sustaining this position.
NATO's most valuable contribution has been the openness it has created.
NATO was, and is a massive intra-western confidence-building measure. It
was NATO and the EU that provided the framework within which Germany could
be reunited without posing a threat to the rest of Europe as its original
unification had in 1871. Both give rise to thousands of meetings of
ministers and officials, so that all those concerned with decisions
involving war and peace know each other well. Compared with the past, this
represents a quality and stability of political relations never known
before.

The EU is the most developed example of a postmodern system. It
represents security through transparency, and transparency through
interdependence. The EU is more a transnational than a supra-national
system, a voluntary association of states rather than the subordination of
states to a central power. The dream of a European state is one left from
a previous age. It rests on the assumption that nation states are
fundamentally dangerous and that the only way to tame the anarchy of
nations is to impose hegemony on them. But if the nation-state is a
problem then the super-state is certainly not a solution.

European states are not the only members of the postmodern world.
Outside Europe, Canada is certainly a postmodern state; Japan is by
inclination a postmodern state, but its location prevents it developing
more fully in this direction. The USA is the more doubtful case since it
is not clear that the US government or Congress accepts either the
necessity or desirability of interdependence, or its corollaries of
openness, mutual surveillance and mutual interference, to the same extent
as most European governments now do. Elsewhere, what in Europe has become
a reality is in many other parts of the world an aspiration. ASEAN, NAFTA,
MERCOSUR and even OAU suggest at least the desire for a postmodern
environment, and though this wish is unlikely to be realised quickly,
imitation is undoubtedly easier than invention.

Within the postmodern world, there are no security threats in the
traditional sense; that is to say, its members do not consider invading
each other. Whereas in the modern world , following Clausewitz' dictum war
is an instrument of policy in the postmodern world it is a sign of policy
failure. But while the members of the postmodern world may not represent a
danger to one another, both the modern and pre-modern zones pose threats.

The threat from the modern world is the most familiar. Here, the
classical state system, from which the postmodern world has only recently
emerged, remains intact, and continues to operate by the principles of
empire and the supremacy of national interest. If there is to be stability
it will come from a balance among the aggressive forces. It is notable how
few are the areas of the world where such a balance exists. And how sharp
the risk is that in some areas there may soon be a nuclear element in the
equation.

The challenge to the postmodern world is to get used to the idea of
double standards. Among ourselves, we operate on the basis of laws and
open cooperative security. But when dealing with more old-fashioned kinds
of states outside the postmodern continent of Europe, we need to revert to
the rougher methods of an earlier era - force, pre-emptive attack,
deception, whatever is necessary to deal with those who still live in the
nineteenth century world of every state for itself. Among ourselves, we
keep the law but when we are operating in the jungle, we must also use the
laws of the jungle. In the prolonged period of peace in Europe, there has
been a temptation to neglect our defences, both physical and
psychological. This represents one of the great dangers of the postmodern
state.

The challenge posed by the pre-modern world is a new one. The
pre-modern world is a world of failed states. Here the state no longer
fulfils Weber's criterion of having the monopoly on the legitimate use of
force. Either it has lost the legitimacy or it has lost the monopoly of
the use of force; often the two go together. Examples of total collapse
are relatively rare, but the number of countries at risk grows all the
time. Some areas of the former Soviet Union are candidates, including
Chechnya. All of the world's major drug-producing areas are part of the
pre-modern world. Until recently there was no real sovereign authority in
Afghanistan; nor is there in upcountry Burma or in some parts of South
America, where drug barons threaten the state's monopoly on force. All
over Africa countries are at risk. No area of the world is without its
dangerous cases. In such areas chaos is the norm and war is a way of life.
In so far as there is a government it operates in a way similar to an
organised crime syndicate.

The premodern state may be too weak even to secure its home territory,
let alone pose a threat internationally, but it can provide a base for
non-state actors who may represent a danger to the postmodern world. If
non-state actors, notably drug, crime, or terrorist syndicates take to
using premodern bases for attacks on the more orderly parts of the world,
then the organised states may eventually have to respond. If they become
too dangerous for established states to tolerate, it is possible to
imagine a defensive imperialism. It is not going too far to view the
West's response to Afghanistan in this light.

How should we deal with the pre-modern chaos? To become involved in a
zone of chaos is risky; if the intervention is prolonged it may become
unsustainable in public opinion; if the intervention is unsuccessful it
may be damaging to the government that ordered it. But the risks of
letting countries rot, as the West did Afghanistan, may be even greater.

What form should intervention take? The most logical way to deal with
chaos, and the one most employed in the past is colonisation. But
colonisation is unacceptable to postmodern states (and, as it happens, to
some modern states too). It is precisely because of the death of
imperialism that we are seeing the emergence of the pre-modern world.
Empire and imperialism are words that have become a form of abuse in the
postmodern world. Today, there are no colonial powers willing to take on
the job, though the opportunities, perhaps even the need for colonisation
is as great as it ever was in the nineteenth century. Those left out of
the global economy risk falling into a vicious circle. Weak government
means disorder and that means falling investment. In the 1950s, South
Korea had a lower GNP per head than Zambia: the one has achieved
membership of the global economy, the other has not.

All the conditions for imperialism are there, but both the supply and
demand for imperialism have dried up. And yet the weak still need the
strong and the strong still need an orderly world. A world in which the
efficient and well governed export stability and liberty, and which is
open for investment and growth - all of this seems eminently desirable.

What is needed then is a new kind of imperialism, one acceptable to a
world of human rights and cosmopolitan values. We can already discern its
outline: an imperialism which, like all imperialism, aims to bring order
and organisation but which rests today on the voluntary principle.

Postmodern imperialism takes two forms. First there is the voluntary
imperialism of the global economy. This is usually operated by an
international consortium through International Financial Institutions such
as the IMF and the World Bank - it is characteristic of the new
imperialism that it is multilateral. These institutions provide help to
states wishing to find their way back into the global economy and into the
virtuous circle of investment and prosperity. In return they make demands
which, they hope, address the political and economic failures that have
contributed to the original need for assistance. Aid theology today
increasingly emphasises governance. If states wish to benefit, they must
open themselves up to the interference of international organisations and
foreign states (just as, for different reasons, the postmodern world has
also opened itself up.)

The second form of postmodern imperialism might be called the
imperialism of neighbours. Instability in your neighbourhood poses threats
which no state can ignore. Misgovernment, ethnic violence and crime in the
Balkans poses a threat to Europe. The response has been to create
something like a voluntary UN protectorate in Bosnia and Kosovo. It is no
surprise that in both cases the High Representative is European. Europe
provides most of the aid that keeps Bosnia and Kosovo running and most of
the soldiers (though the US presence is an indispensable stabilising
factor). In a further unprecedented move, the EU has offered unilateral
free-market access to all the countries of the former Yugoslavia for all
products including most agricultural produce. It is not just soldiers that
come from the international community; it is police, judges, prison
officers, central bankers and others. Elections are organised and
monitored by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe
(OSCE). Local police are financed and trained by the UN. As auxiliaries to
this effort - in many areas indispensable to it - are over a hundred NGOs.

One additional point needs to be made. It is dangerous if a
neighbouring state is taken over in some way by organised or disorganised
crime - which is what state collapse usually amounts to. But Usama bin
Laden has now demonstrated for those who had not already realised, that
today all the world is, potentially at least, our neighbour.

The Balkans are a special case. Elsewhere in Central and Eastern Europe
the EU is engaged in a programme which will eventually lead to massive
enlargement. In the past empires have imposed their laws and systems of
government; in this case no one is imposing anything. Instead, a voluntary
movement of self-imposition is taking place. While you are a candidate for
EU membership you have to accept what is given - a whole mass of laws and
regulations - as subject countries once did. But the prize is that once
you are inside you will have a voice in the commonwealth. If this process
is a kind of voluntary imperialism, the end state might be describes as a
cooperative empire. 'Commonwealth' might indeed not be a bad name.

The postmodern EU offers a vision of cooperative empire, a common
liberty and a common security without the ethnic domination and
centralised absolutism to which past empires have been subject, but also
without the ethnic exclusiveness that is the hallmark of the nation state
- inappropriate in an era without borders and unworkable in regions such
as the Balkans. A cooperative empire might be the domestic political
framework that best matches the altered substance of the postmodern state:
a framework in which each has a share in the government, in which no
single country dominates and in which the governing principles are not
ethnic but legal. The lightest of touches will be required from the
centre; the 'imperial bureaucracy' must be under control, accountable, and
the servant, not the master, of the commonwealth. Such an institution must
be as dedicated to liberty and democracy as its constituent parts. Like
Rome, this commonwealth would provide its citizens with some of its laws,
some coins and the occasional road.

That perhaps is the vision. Can it be realised? Only time will tell.
The question is how much time there may be. In the modern world the secret
race to acquire nuclear weapons goes on. In the premodern world the
interests of organised crime - including international terrorism - grow
greater and faster than the state. There may not be much time left.

·Robert Cooper is a senior serving British diplomat, and
writes in a personal capacity. This article is published as The
post-modern state in the new collection Reordering the World: the
long term implications of September 11, published by The Foreign Policy Centre.